Apathy, Good Manners and a loss of connection

Hi it's me again.
I sort of fell off the edge for a while there but with luck I'll be posting again with a bit more frequency from now on.
The thing is that during the week, while I'm at work my access to the internet is zero, unless I want to go to the internet cafe {this is where the apathy comes in} but I just think to myself, "can't be arsed". Then there is the weekend and Saturday in partiular, this sees me at a friends house cooking the weekly chillie (in the summer we bar-b-q and he cooks that) and it just seems to me to be slightly bad form to say that seeing as the chillie is on simmer now I'm off upstairs to use your computer for the next hour or so just so I can update my blog {that's the good manners part}.
So I decided to make the effort and to use the internet cafe on my way back to barracks after work, only to discover a closed cafe containing one irate owner and a confused looking BT engineer {loss of connection bit}. So my lack of blog activity this past month isn't all my fault, much.
Now there are probably some of you out there thinking, "well how did he get this post done after what he just said?". Easy I threw out my good manners and decided to use my friends computer, handing him the large wooden spoon so that he can take over the job of periodicly stiring the chillie, lest it stick to the bottom of the pan and earn him a flogging (something his missus would no doublt deliver as she looks forward to chillie night just as much as the rest of us).

Joined the rest of the human race the other week and got a credit card(Gasp!), well I had to thanks to work, I'll explain.
Work used to give me a rail warrant (one a month) that I could exhange for a return trip home, all well and good. Now they don't thanks to a new admin system that they have bought. Now we have to soort out our own travel, claims, leave and stuff. Something we haven't had to do in such depth before and one of the upshots is the loss of the warrants, now they claim to pay into your pay account a daily rate of milage that will be enough for not one but two return trips home on the train. Only some of the preceeding statement is true, can you guess what bit that may be? Anyone? Yes you got it "for not one". The total amount paid in is £40 short of one return ticket if bought on the day of travel.
So you don't have to be a maths whiz to figure that the company (I say company as that is what the Royal Navy has been turned into, R.N. Plc) is saving a fortune at the expence of its men and women. (breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out)
Any way the upshot is that I was told by one of the admin types that I could get cheap deals by booking tickets over the internet, so I had to get a credit card or pay through the nose each time I wished to see my loved ones in the grim north.
Have card, can book, did book,TORNADO, London, no trains to the grim north, stuck darrn saff. It's just as well that the company is good otherwise I'd have to go mad1 and probably mad2.
But ever the optomist I'm going to book some more tickets in the hope that there will be trains again (to the north) on the route that I will be booking them.
One fool in a hat solomly informed me that he could get me on a train to Shefield, but I would have to stay over night before getting a connection to Liverpool, this was at Euston and the poor man must have been close to a nervous breakdown caused by thousands of people asking him how they where to get home with all the train cancelations beacause that has to be the reason why he wished me to stay overnight in Shefield. Git!

Is it just me or am I leaving it too late to do all my xmas shopping?
It is just me isn't it.

Anyhoo, bye for now I'm off to shop on line with my new plastic, wish me luck.

P.S. Hi to OLPP and PK